And The Bat Stashed Under Dad’s Bed He Thinks He Can Use In Case Robbers Come To Steal Us . . . That, Too?

And you thought it would stop at trans fats and the “N” section of the dictionary. No, they’ve come for your softball games, too:

New York City would become one of the first cities in the country to prohibit the use of metal bats in high school baseball games, under a bill that a City Council committee approved yesterday and that the full Council is considered all but certain to pass tomorrow.

. . .

The Council’s Youth Services Committee approved the bill on a 4-to-0 vote. The bill has 32 sponsors and the support of the Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn. They would need 34 votes, two-thirds of the 51 members on the Council, to override a veto by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

“The mayor has some skepticism both about whether this bill fixes the problem it says it does and whether this is something the government should be doing,” a mayoral spokesman, Stu Loeser, said yesterday. “He has made no decision about a veto.”

According to the Council, it would cost the city’s public high schools $253,500 to replace 5,070 metal or metal-composite bats used by 169 baseball teams with wood bats, and $67,600 a year thereafter to replace broken wood bats. The bill’s sponsors said they would ask donors to defray the costs for private and parochial schools.

. . .

Metal bats were introduced in the early 1970s as a cost-saving alternative to wood bats, and by the early 1980s, a consensus had emerged among players and coaches that metal bats outperform wood ones. The National Collegiate Athletic Association first adopted guidelines for limiting bat performance in 1998.

Researchers from Brown University found in 2001 that baseballs hit with a metal bat traveled faster than those hit with a wood bat, but could not conclusively identify the factors responsible for the difference in performance. Since then, the N.C.A.A. and the National Federation of State High School Associations have adopted rules requiring that metal bats perform no better than the best wood bats.

On Sunday, Richard M. Greenwald, one of the Brown researchers, wrote that he knew of no scientific data to support the notion “that the use of nonwood bats poses an unacceptable risk to children, particularly high school competitive players,” according to an e-mail message released by [metal bat maker] Easton Sports.

Friends Of P?

After taking care of the N-word yesterday, Councilmember Leroy Comrie then turned his attention to the much-hated P-word:

The bill passed 38-7 over the objections of pedicab drivers, who say the regulations go too far. The bill caps the number of pedicabs that can be operated in the city at 325, bans the use of electric motors some drivers use to help in pedaling, and requires that operators carry liability insurance at a level similar to taxi owners’.

Currently, about half of pedicab operators are without insurance, Council officials say. The bill also requires that drivers be licensed and that the vehicles undergo inspections.

Another significant feature of the bill allows the police to close off a large chunk of Midtown, where pedicabs proliferate, from Nov. 12 through Jan. 7. The police can also restrict the pedicabs from other areas, at other times of year, for up to 14 days, if there is “unusual, heavy pedestrian or vehicular traffic” or events like parades.

Pedicab drivers say the provisions give the police a blank check to ban them from Midtown, where most of their business is. The industry also objects to the cap, which it says will remove from the streets about 175 pedicabs currently operating, and to the restriction on electric motors.

Chad Marlow, who represents the New York City Pedicab Owners Association, said the association agrees with much of the legislation, but plans to file a lawsuit challenging some elements of it. He said it believes that the Council was within its rights to impose a cap as the city does with taxis, but that the restriction on electric motors and the provision giving the police the power to ban pedicabs from Midtown run afoul of the law.

. . .

At a council hearing before yesterday’s vote, Councilman Alan J. Gerson, who supported the original legislation but removed his name from the current version of the bill, said, “They’re nonpolluting, they’re quiet; why should the city care if they are electric assist or not?”

But Councilman Leroy G. Comrie Jr. of Queens, one of the bill’s sponsors, said that under state law, the use of electric motors would cause the pedicabs to be classified as motorized vehicles. As such, they could not be registered because they lack the safety features required of cars and trucks.

Save yourself the heartache and don’t tell your uppity libertarian friends about this next quote:

“There is a lot of sentiment to remove the pedicabs altogether,” Councilman Comrie said. “People felt it was unfair they were being unregulated.”

Follow The Money

Who’s behind congestion pricing proposals? The powerful bike lobby:

Once the domain of traffic nerds, congestion pricing has taken hold here recently like never before. Both the Partnership for New York City, a prominent group of business executives, and the Manhattan Institute, the conservative think tank, endorsed or re-endorsed it in December, joining a list of longstanding proponents such as the Regional Plan Association.

[Transportation Alternatives executive director] Mr. [Paul Steely] White represents the left flank, then, of a set of strange bedfellows. Founded by radical bicyclists in the 1970’s, Transportation Alternatives comes across as a sort of alterna-elite group of forward-thinking urban planners.

About half of its 5,500 members are from Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn, and its 18 full- and part-time employees are generally white, well-educated twentysomethings who ride their bikes to work. Many of its largest donors are Wall Street types, and its largest individual funder is Mark Gorton, the high-tech entrepreneur who founded LimeWire. To them, Mr. White says, “Biking is the new golf.”

But T.A., as it’s called, has long tried to project itself as a generally pro-person, anti-traffic group. The city Department of Transportation ended up copying Safe Routes to Schools, a program established by Mr. White’s predecessor, John Kaehny, which seeks improvements to streets near schools. A similar program, Safe Routes for Seniors, is next in line for adoption, Mr. White hopes.

And the group regularly submits suggestions for traffic improvements throughout the city, sponsors bike rides, and gives away helmets in poor neighborhoods.

The potential constituency for this tiny, million-dollar-a-year organization headquartered in a Chelsea loft is quite large. Everybody has a gripe about traffic, after all, and it’s only going to get worse.

Follow The Money

The mighty horticulturalist union is licking its chops over its good fortune:

Cherry trees in Brooklyn’s Botanic Gardens have hit full bloom months early. Crocuses that shouldn’t be seen until April are flowering, and turtles forgot to hibernate.

With temperatures getting close to 60 degrees yesterday, New York has so far skipped winter — and left nature in a tailspin.

“It is magic out there,” said the garden’s horticulturist Mark Tebbitt.

“In my nine years here, I have never seen this type of growth in winter.”

Snow is another thing New Yorkers haven’t seen this winter, threatening a 115-year-old record for the season’s latest snowfall (Jan. 6, 1892).

Follow The Money

The controversial proposed alcohol ban on commuter trains gets more sinister:

The MTA board member leading the charge to ban the sale of booze on commuter rail platforms and trains works for a law firm that represents several of the restaurants and bars at Penn Station that would stand to benefit from the prohibition.

Long Island Rail Road bartenders, who fear their jobs are on the line, say it was only after Mitchell Pally was hired three months ago to handle “government relations” at the Weber Law Group, a Melville-based firm, that talk of the prohibition began.

“We’ve all been wondering where this whole thing came from, and when we checked the company’s Web site, we thought we may have our answer,” said one LIRR bar-cart attendant, who asked not to be identified.

The Weber Law Group lists restaurant-franchise giant Riese Restaurants as one of its clients.

Riese, whose Penn Station restaurants include TGI Friday’s and Houlihan’s, would likely see a spike in beer and liquor sales if the railroad stopped selling booze to passengers.

“There’s no question this would be good for business,” CEO Dennis Riese said. “But just a little.”

. . .

Pally said he brought the issue to the table because, as public policy, “it did not make sense” for the state to serve as bartender to customers who get in their cars when they arrive at their home station.

“I have been here [at Weber] three months and I don’t discuss my MTA activities with anybody,” Pally said.

Andrew Albert, a non-voting MTA board member, said he would need more information, but thought Pally’s employer could represent a conflict of interest in this matter. “It does not sound good,” he said.

Meanwhile, the unions that represent service attendants, along with the commuters who say they have a right to a drink on their train ride home, are stepping up their campaigns against the proposed ban.